by Bethany-Kris
All the stones in the quiet place were mostly shiny, but some weren’t. Letters and words covered them all. Violet could read a few small words, but not the big ones.
“What does … rest … mean?” she asked Kaz, finding one word she could pronounce because of the letters.
“Um, my dad says resting means relaxing. Being quiet, still. Sleeping, sometimes.”
Violet nodded. That made sense.
This was the quiet place. It was a good spot to rest.
Her father had told her to be a good girl when they first arrived at the quiet place. He said other stuff, too, like “respect” and “graves”.
Violet didn’t really know what all that meant.
But she figured that since she was sitting with Kaz, and not running around, she was being a good girl, and respecting the graves.
Whatever those were.
Suddenly, the quiet place brightened again and Violet’s cheeks warmed with the rays of the sun.
“Sun is back,” Kaz said.
Violet was already looking up, but she closed her eyes again. It only lasted a few seconds longer than the last time, but her face stayed warmer for longer, too.
After the sun was hidden behind the clouds again, Kaz asked, “Well, what does it look like today?”
Violet shrugged. “I don’t know. I closed my eyes again.”
“You’re supposed to be helping me see.”
She was.
Violet smiled. “The sun keeps hiding and it doesn’t stay for long.”
“What do the trees look like, then?”
“Pretty.”
“Pretty?” Kaz asked.
“Colorful.”
“What colors?”
“All the colors,” she said, giggling.
“Tell me more,” Kaz replied.
Violet started describing everything she could see for her new friend.
Because he couldn't see.
And that wasn’t fair.
She didn’t mind.
Kaz was smiling.
Kaz came awake slowly, then all at once. The sharp rays of sunlight peeking through the drapes of his bedroom were too fucking bright this early in the morning. With a groan, he rolled over, putting his back to the windows, his arm stretching out beside him, but coming up short when he was met with soft skin.
There was a moment of confusion as his foggy mind tried to catch up with what his hands were feeling. Nevertheless, he continued on, letting his fingers slide down and over feminine curves. Memories of the night before slammed back into him as his eyes opened and he took in the sight of blonde hair fanning out along his sheets and pillows.
From what he could tell, Violet was still sleeping, her chest rising and falling with even breaths as she remained unaware to his movements. How many hours had gone by as he had familiarized himself with the very curves he was tracing once more? Did it matter? He still felt like there was so much left to learn.
Even more so when it came to the woman herself.
Slipping out of bed, careful not to jostle her, he headed in the direction of the bathroom, leaving the lights off as he went. After relieving himself and washing his hands, he splashed water on his face, trying to further wake himself up. He had only been gone a handful of minutes at most, but as he reentered his bedroom, he could see that Violet was awake, though she hadn’t moved from her spot in his bed.
And, oh, what a sight she made.
She was naked beneath that gray sheet she held against her chest. Her hair rumpled and in disarray, she looked like she had spent the night getting fucked. He might have smiled at that thought, but for the way she was looking at him with a mixture of confusion and dawning realization.
Curious, he asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I remember you,” she said just soft enough that he almost didn’t hear her. “We were in a graveyard? I think? I’m not really sure—it was all fuzzy.”
It wasn’t fuzzy for Kaz. He remembered that day well, mostly that he didn’t want to go. After the car bomb shortly before, Kaz had hated any kind of light, the sight of it making his head hurt instantly, even with the thick, opaque sunglasses Vasily had bought for him.
His father hadn’t told him much of what was going to happen that day, only that he was expected to be there, and to be on his best behavior. Even at ten years old, he knew better than to disappoint his father, especially on a day as important as that one, even if he didn’t know it at the time.
It had been one of the few times that Kaz had seen Alberto Gallucci in person, and the lone time he had seen Violet in person before a few weeks ago. More, it wasn’t the Italian Don, or his father’s excitement after the meeting had taken place, that he remembered most about that day.
It was Violet.
She had to have been no more than four at the time, but she smiled and talked to him like they were the same age. There had been no fear in her when she spoke, talking about things he couldn’t see as she described them for him.
It was the sun, she had said, that shined the brightest …
Thinking back on it, he wasn’t so sure that was true.
“Yeah,” he finally responded. “It was a graveyard.”
She ran fingers through her hair, trying to tame it as best she could, even as she looked away from him, trying to remember a past that he knew all too well. “Why were we there, though?”
That was one answer even Kaz didn’t have. He had asked Vasily once, what he and Alberto had discussed that day, but his father had never given him an answer, and even forbid him from asking about it again. Until recently, he had abided by that—truthfully, he hadn’t given a shit to ask again—but now, he was a little more curious.
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t seem surprised by his lack of knowledge. “That was what you meant then, when you said we met before?”
Pushing off the wall, he crossed the floor in a few, quick strides, and stretched out at the foot of the bed, tucking his hands beneath his head. “It was.”
“Funny that no one’s ever mentioned that,” she said almost absently, shifting in the bed so she was sitting up.
Especially with the way Vasily talked about the man, as though he was the scum of the earth. One would think that the two men had never seen eye to eye on anything, but at one point, at least for a time, they had. There had been no bullets fired that day, nor had any voices raised above pleasant conversation level.
Strange. All of it was fucking strange.
But the last thing Kaz wanted to be doing presently was thinking about his father, and hers, knowing that if either of them knew what was happening at that very moment, Kaz would be a dead man.
Reaching out, he offered her his hand, and she accepted it without question, letting him pull her across the bed, dragging the sheet along with her. As she straddled him, his hands drifted beneath the fabric that covered her to rest at her hips, and he felt content, enjoying the visual she made on top of him.
He could have never anticipated this, that he actually wanted her exactly where she was, but he did. And though he had business to attend to, he wasn’t ready to give up this moment. He’d hold onto it for as long as he could.
“Now it’s you,” she said with a smile, drawing his attention back to her. “You’re overthinking.”
He merely returned her smile, reaching up to let the strands of her hair drift through his fingers. She leaned down further to give him better access, but the moment she did, he stole a kiss instead, feeling her contented sigh against his lips.
One hand drifted around to the back of her head, fisting the hair there to keep her in place, the other palming her backside to keep her steady. It was only supposed to be for a moment, just a quick kiss to remind him of what she tasted like, but it soon spiraled into something else as she ground down on his cock, making him grip her ass just a bit tighter.
Kaz was hard, had been since the moment she climbed on top of him, but at the feel of how wet she was, even the slight tr
emor that worked its way through her body, it became almost painful.
Last night hadn’t been enough. No matter how many hours were spent rolling around in his bed. He was quickly learning that when it came to her, he was insatiable, the need almost making him crazed. But as he had half a mind to grab a condom from his nightstand, a ringing phone made him pause.
It took him a moment, thinking it was his phone, but as Violet shot up, scrambling off of him to go in search of it, he knew their moment was over, and at worse, their time was up.
She hadn’t been gone long before she was right back in his bedroom, the phone to her ear, her face devoid of color. “Hey, Daddy.”
There was nothing quite like the sound of her saying, ‘Daddy,’ that made his cock shrivel up, but he didn’t move from his spot on the bed, not wanting to even breathe in her direction.
“In thirty minutes?” Violet said, the anxiety in her expression making Kaz frown, wondering what they were talking about. “I won’t be ready by then. I’ve only been awake for a few minutes. I need to shower, do my hair—and you know how long it takes me to do my makeup, I—”
She grew quiet again, and he could almost hear her father’s muffled voice on the other end.
“No, no. An hour is fine … right, I’ll see you soon … bye.”
The second she ended the call, she turned her panicked eyes on Kaz. “My dad is sending a driver to my place in an hour. We need to go.” She spun around, rushing back to his bathroom where he had thrown her clothes all over the floor.
Fuck.
It was already hell trying to get through Manhattan traffic on a good day, and that was on top of the hour and a half drive that it took to get there from Little Odessa. To get her there in less than an hour?
Kaz grabbed the first pair of pants he could find, then a shirt, and finally shoes before he had his keys in hand and was ushering Violet out the door. Down in the parking garage, he unlocked the doors to his Porsche with a press of the button, but as he walked toward it, Violet hesitated.
“What?”
She bit her lip. “Everyone knows this car …”
True enough. “But if you want to get back to Manhattan anytime soon, it’s the Porsche—the Rover will be too slow.”
He didn’t have to say anything further before she was sliding into the passenger seat. He barely gave her a chance to buckle in before his foot was on the gas and he was shooting out of the garage and onto the street, ignoring the blaring horns he left in his wake.
Shifting into second gear, he bypassed another set of cars, barely making it through a yellow light before it turned red.
“You know, if I die in a car wreck,” Violet started, her fingers white-knuckled around the center console. “That’s not going to help us.”
Kaz merely said, “I got this,” before concentrating on the road again, the speedometer already approaching ninety miles an hour.
He hardly paid attention to anything else besides the cars surrounding him, and the time ticking by on his dash. Doing well over forty above the speed limit, he knew if he passed any police, he was definitely getting stopped, but that was the last thing on his mind.
Just sitting beside her, he could feel the waves of anxiety pouring off her, the fear that she wasn’t going to make it in time, or worse … that she would be caught with him.
But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen.
“You know,” Kaz said, a sudden thought popping into his head. “I don’t have your number.”
Violet looked at him as though he’d grown a second head. “Are you serious?”
“About needing your number? Absolutely. The next time I show up to your place uninvited might not work out as well for me.”
With one hand still on the wheel, he dug into his pocket for his phone, typing in the four-digit code before passing her the device. “Plug it in.”
She didn’t question his command, merely did what he asked, then went on to call her own phone so that she would have his number as well.
The hour mark had just passed when he made it into the city. The traffic was far worse there than it was outside of it.
Worse, he knew better than to pull up directly outside of her building. There was no guarantee that her father didn’t have people watching the place, or even just in the neighborhood doing business. So instead, he turned on a side street, parking on the opposite side of the back of her building.
He didn’t get a chance to say a word before she was whipping her seatbelt off and opening the door, but before she got out, she leaned across and gave him a quick kiss, surprising the hell out of him for a moment.
“See you later.”
Violet was gone seconds later, dashing across the street in a flurry of blonde hair. Even with the circumstance being so dire, and the fact that he still had to make it back out of Manhattan yet, Kaz still smiled.
Violet had just come up to the back of her building when the phone in her purse started to ring. The sound was as insistent as it was dooming. Answering the call, she put the phone to her ear and hoped the background noise of the city went unnoticed.
“Hello?”
“Gee will be there in fifteen minutes,” Alberto said, not even offering her a greeting. “Apparently, traffic is terrible in Manhattan this morning and he’s stuck behind an accident that just happened two minutes ago.”
Violet felt her heart finally rise back up from her stomach into her chest. “That’s okay, Daddy.”
“Are you already outside? I hear cars.”
Shit.
“Yeah, just waiting on him out front. You said an hour, right?”
“I did,” Alberto agreed. “You’ll be a little late for breakfast because of the traffic, but it was semantics anyway.”
Violet’s brow furrowed as she dug for the access key that would let her in through the back emergency door of her building. She needed the front desk people to at least see her walk by them in case her father asked after her at some point.
“Semantics?” she asked.
“Your friends are here,” was all he said.
She knew then what was happening. The events of the night before involving Ruslan and Franco had not gone unnoticed by her father. Amelia’s lies had probably been exposed.
Alberto Gallucci was not the type of man to beat around the bush. She had told her father the truth of what happened, and there was no doubt in her mind that he would not have sent Franco after Kaz’s brother, based on her side of the story.
But her father didn't know that she knew.
So, she feigned ignorance. “Why are my friends there?”
Alberto sighed, heavy and angry at the same time. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Wonderful.
He hung up the call without a goodbye.
Violet managed to get inside her building, and took a quick look at the screen of her phone. She had another ten minutes to be at the front waiting, if Gee’s estimate of time had been anything to go on. The man was known for his fucking punctuality.
His time was right and she knew it.
The decorative mirrors along the back hallway that led into the main floor where the elevators were stopped Violet. She grabbed the small toiletry case out of her purse, and did what she could to her face and hair with what time she had, and what products were in the bag.
She made a mental note to keep more in it next time when she was left with nothing more than a bit of color to her cheeks, red lipstick, and mascara. The single black elastic in the bag was more than enough for her to pull her messy hair back at the nape of her neck, and flip the hair up in and around to make it seem like she had put far more effort into the updo than what she actually had.
Messy was a style, after all.
Checking her appearance one last time, and pulling a few strands of hair out to let it frame her face, she grabbed her purse off the floor and headed for the front. She didn’t give the front desk a second glance, and they didn’t seem to notice that she hadn’t
come out of the elevators.
Her heart still pounded like crazy.
The building’s front door just closed behind her when Gee pulled up.
Violet walked in on what she could only describe as a somber mood. The dining room table was filled with people—Amelia, Nicole, their parents, Violet’s mother and father, and her brother. There was even a couple of other men standing in the corner of the room, gazes trained on Amelia, and faces as blank as stone.
“Violet,” Alberto greeted, barely glancing up from the phone in front of him.
“Morning, Daddy.”
He waved a hand at the free chair beside Nicole. “Sit.”
The command was laced with the sound of his obvious irritation. Violet chose not to argue, and grabbed the chair to sit as fast as she could. Her father looked her over, taking in her appearance quickly before his attention was back on that phone again.
Silently, Violet let out a breath of relief.
If Alberto hadn’t been satisfied with the way she looked, he would have said straight away, regardless of who was around to hear him criticize her. She figured what with the adrenaline rush the entire morning had been, she probably looked fresh-faced and wide awake.
Maybe she should thank Kaz for driving like a freaking maniac.
Alberto swiped at the screen on his phone, and scowled.
“Nothing?” Christian asked from where he sat, directly across from his daughter.
Nicole flinched at her father’s question, her head dropping a little lower.
“I’m sorry,” Amelia whispered.
Vito shook his head, rubbing at his temples. “Boss—”
“Shut up. Fermo, stolto,” Alberto barked, the volume of his shout echoing through the dining room. Even Violet dipped her head, and she knew damn well it wasn’t her in trouble. “Do you know what your daughter has done now?”
“I know,” Vito replied quietly.
“I cannot even get a response from the Russian. It’s bad enough when I do have to speak to any of them, but let me just say it is far worse when he will not answer a call.”
Violet’s head snapped up, finding her father seething mad, but with a bit of panic lingering there as well.